Grumman-581 wrote:
On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:33:41 -0000, Dylan Smith
wrote:

Also, the Johnson Space Center. Houston Gulf used to be the airport to
visit from this but it suffered the same fate as many private airfields
- now covered in tract housing.


Although Houston Gulf was probably closer, Ellington is probably the
closest these days... Technically, there's probably enough room on the
empty fields around NASA to land there and there's even a bit of
pavement where they supposedly tested rocket engines many years ago
that probably is long enough to land on... There's a tower at one end
of it... They probably won't be all that receptive to you landing
there... For some reason, security personnel don't seem to be issued
senses of humor...

Ballunar Fest is held out there every october. We contemplated, and had
preliminary permission to land some fixed wing stuff out there for some
of the mid-day non-balloon activities. The pilots walked it, and said no
way. Too many drainage troughs in just the wrong places.

There were ultralights, and ultralights towing hang gliders, and one
auto-gyro operating off the back 40 during the event though.

Security is never a problem with "prior permission"

And yes. Ellington is closest, La Porte is #2 and Pearland Regional is
#3 closest.